With this year's Christmas School up and ready for purchase, I have shifted my focus back to creating things for language arts lessons. Formally known here as Beyond Literature, I am rebranding it Simply Language Arts so as not to be confused with another curriculum by that name and also to be able to expand into things besides literature.
Nutcracker Themed Christmas School 2024
"It's the most wonderful time of the year." Especially for this homeschooled momma, even if it's only in October. If you're a homeschooling Momma like me, we usually plan months for the holidays. Read my blog post "Christmas School: What it is and How We Utilize it in our Homeschool" to discover what Christmas school is for us. I've spent the last several months making and creating our Christmas School Unit for 2024. I've always been intrigued by The Nutcracker. When I found a Young Adult Novel (Nutcracked), I was excited to start creating for it.
Let's take a look at what is going to be available this year in our Nutcracker Themed Christmas School:
Earlier this year, in the blog post "Homeschooling in My Own Hard Season," I expressed my struggles working with our preschooler. Our tot school plans didn't work well because she wasn't genuinely interested, and I was also dealing with pregnancy issues. So, I tabled "formal' work with her until now. So here we are with Bird at 3 ½ years old, and I think we are both ready for something a bit more. I didn't find an all-in-one program that fit what we needed. I wasn't ready to piece things together and buy more useless supplies. So Momma Bear Preschool was born.
I am still in the planning stages and planning as we go now. But, I have recently shared a few Facebook/Instagram posts highlighting some games/activities I have been doing with our 3- 3-year-old for preschool. We are a few weeks in, and I am ready to share my outlined plan. I also hope to do a monthly highlight post (on IG or Facebook) or blog post about what we have been doing for the month. Once we are in an even better groove, I plan on writing up our games and activities, making those available as a download on the printables section of my webpage.
It has been a bit since I've had a new blog post. I'm sorry. It is not often that I admit when I’m struggling, but currently, that is where I find myself. I am in a mix of confusion and lack of organization with a side of brain fog. It’s already May, and we still haven’t found that perfect groove of the homeschool routine we have had the last few years. I know it’s just a season, and we will find our new routine eventually, but I feel like a brand new homeschooling momma, even though I’m entering year ten in our journey.
This is the last blog post in the blog post series Our Favorite Curriculum (Find the other four post HERE). Apologia is a curriculum I wish we would have used sooner in our homeschooling journey. Not that I didn’t like our science choice before, but this one has been even easier to use and has allowed me to make science an independent subject for our older girls to work on, leaving me free to take care of a baby and now toddler as well.
Here are the top five reasons we will continue to use Apologia in our homeschool journey.
This curriculum was a no-brainer when I found it. I would have taught writing very similar to IEW's approach to writing had I remained in the classroom teaching. Writing is a simple process, but I know it can be overwhelming to some. IEW takes away that overwhelm with clear and simple steps that build off each other and can help the most reluctant writer.
I settled on choosing our curriculum for reading and math fairly quickly (See the posts on our other favorites, AALP and MUS). The rest of our subjects took some trial and error on my part and time to figure out what worked best for us and fit into my vision for our homeschool.
I began trying to write my curriculum, using a concept similar to Sonlight of teaching history through literature and not a dry textbook. I kept referencing Sonlights books lists and would also pour other online lists. So approximately three years into our homeschooling journey, I bit the bullet. I purchased a Core B (Introduction to World History) from a Facebook group and pieced together the missing parts. It took us a year and a half to use that first core, then I switched to year-round homeschooling, and Sonlight fell right into place with our homeschooling journey.
Once we settled with Sonlight, here are the top five reasons we will continue to use Sonlight.
Like our story with All About Learning Press, I stumbled upon our math curriculum and began using Math U See. I was very leary of teaching math because it was not my chosen field, and I struggled with it in school. I somehow managed to make it through high school and college, but it was a struggle. I knew I needed something that would help guide me along the way and be very user-friendly in the long run.
In came Math U See, another curriculum we have used since our homeschooling journey began. Mouse, our oldest, has just started Zeta (Decimals and Percents), and Thumper has started Delta (Single and Multiple DigitDivision). I do not see us switching math curriculums, and here are the top five reasons we have chosen and continue to stick with Math U See.
When we started homeschooling, I was unsure of my ability to teach my child how to read. I was "trained/educated" to help students interpret and analyze what they read, but not how to read. So I searched the internet, found homeschool blogs, and trolled Facebook groups. All About Reading kept coming up. So I dove in and made our first homeschooling purchase, and we haven't turned back.
As with the other two lessons already in this more significant unit, there are teacher and student notes and a PowerPoint Presentation to help teach the concept. There are also two activities to enhance your student's understanding of the concept. The activity Same Picture-Four Settings has your students redraw the same picture in ways based on setting choices that they get to either choose from or pick from a bowl/hat. The second activity, Describe the Setting, allows your student to practice their writing skills and how they would describe the setting of the picture if they were an author. I've included several photos to choose from or offer variety within your home/school.
